Campbell Beth 9 Months

Just to let everyone know, I finished this post on DECEMBER 30, 2014!!!  But alas it is January 8, 2015 and I’m just now getting around to adding pictures and posting.  Life is about to get real hectic for the next several months so I’m hoping to still continue blogging occasionally.  Why does time seem to speed up with each day?  Sigh…

So I obviously just finished up my 8 month post for my baby girl and somehow she’s 9 months already.  I hate this warp time speed thing.  I swear the days and months and years just keep getting faster and faster and I despise it.  It honestly wasn’t even noticeable to me until I had my first baby.  That saying, “The days are long but the years are short” certainly applied to our little family when Emmett first got here.  I swear those first 2 years crawled by.  But then I had Campbell and my life went from slow and steady with the days taking seemingly forever to days just flashing by me.  I go to bed every single night thinking, “didn’t I just do this a few hours ago?!” when in reality I did just do “this” but it was 24 hours ago.  Anyways, only my baby girl’s 9 month update.

My little angel.  I swear I do thank God for both of my kids multiple times a day but sometimes I think Campbell is my little angel.  At least that’s what I call her most of the time.  Campbell’s 9th month has been a breeze.  She’s just about the happiest most easy-go-lucky child one can have.  She seriously just goes with the flow.  Any situation she’s put in she adapts to.

Campbell is now just full on crawling.  And she’s fast too.  Once she finally realized how to move she hasn’t looked back.   She never went through the army crawl stage or scooting on her bottom.  She literally went from rocking on all 4’s to moving forward by crawling.  Speaking of moving she also learned how to pull up on things the same week she started crawling.  This was a lot to take in for me as she was so immobile for so long and now we have to baby proof EVERYTHING!!  She’s so curious about her world and she’s also extremely persistent and will get what she wants and will get to where she wants to be no matter what.  She’s super strong and I think it has a lot to do with those thunder thighs she’s got.  The girl doesn’t have ankles.

So while she was learning how to crawl everywhere and pull up to a standing position, she also caught a nasty virus called hand foot and mouth which is apparently a childhood disease.  It’s highly contagious and gross.  The kids both caught it and both had blisters all over their mouths for about a week.  At least Campbell used the quarantine time to learn how to perfect her movement skills 🙂

So I want to share a little something about this girls personality.  She’s one of the most aggressive little baby’s I’ve ever come across.  She just doesn’t stop trying to get something until she has it.  That being said, she is super quiet about it.  She isn’t like most babies who fuss and cry and scream when they want something and someone moves it out of their way.  Campbell will shove barriers out of her way, she’ll shake things out of her way, she’ll bulldoze over what ever it is that’s in her way to make sure she gets what she’s after.  If Emmett and she are playing together and he has a toy that she wants she will just grab it right out from under him.  If he takes it back from her she’ll just grab it right back.  She’s also been known to take Emmett’s pacifiers out of his mouth while I’m reading him books before naps and bedtime.  If she’s in the bed with us she’ll crawl over anyone and everything to get to his mouth and then yank his pacifier out.  Of course she has no clue what to do with it once she has it but she will put the nipple in her mouth, usually with the pacifier upside-down to show that she “knows” what she’s doing.

I’ve also caught her laughing while looking at nothing several times.  She’ll be cruising along on the floor, stop to sit down, and then out of nowhere just start giggling.  It’s funny to me because usually she’ll just sit in a corner with her back towards the world, stare at the wall, and start laughing.  It’s odd and hilarious.  She also has done this while in her carseat, her crib, or her highchair, all while totally by herself.  Speaking of her giggling Chad always comments on how she sounds like a squeaky toy.  It’s super adorable and it’s hard not to laugh when she does it.

Campbell still continues to be super interested in her older brother.  She just stars at him all day long.  He moves a million miles a minute and it’s cute to watch her try to keep up by crawling after him.  Every time Campbell isn’t with me Emmett always asks if he can go get her.  I think the feeling is mutual for both of them.  They are two peas in a pod and I love that they have such a great bond (at least for now).

And just because I need to mention this, light sockets.  This girl is obsessed with light sockets!  WHY!?  She sees one and zooms over to it then methodically picks her tiny fat finger up and in it goes.   Well not quite in because I rush over and grab her.  But Emmett never did this nor was he the least bit interested in those things!  One thing I can say that the kids were/are both interested in is the dog’s water dish.  Campbell just can’t stay away and if I don’t put it up before she’s awake then she will, without fail, pick it up and empty it everywhere.  She also loves to splash in the emptied out water after she’s poured it all out.  She also puts EVERYTHING into her mouth.  I swear my fingers in her mouth all day long fishing out tiny balled up pieces of paper or some tiny bead from a toy of Emmett’s.  Needless to say, the house is slowly being baby proofed all over again, gates and all!

And because it’s December that also means we celebrated Christmas and what’s Christmas without a visit to Santa.  Both kids went to Santa like it was NBD BUT neither of them smiled and thought the idea of sitting on this guys lap was ridiculous.  I don’t know.  You make your own conclusions based on the photo…

Campbell went through a very bad bought of constipation over the last few weeks too.  This may be because I wasn’t watching her too closely now that I think about it, and she probably swallowed something she wasn’t supposed to!  Anyways, we have more baby food than we know what to do with (from my lovely friend Michele) because we had to put her on a completely breastfed and prune diet.  That did the trick because for two days in a row she’s had nice blowouts.  Normally I’d complain about this but it’s great to know she doesn’t cry every time she poops now!  I’m not even kidding, she would CRY when she was going #2!  It was so sad.  But everything is back to normal.

So all that baby food…We will have it for over a month I’m sure.  I’m so grateful for my friend who makes that baby food because I think it’s turning Campbell into a great eater.  She LOVES her food and has finally stopped pushing away the spoon.  She eats all types of fruits and vegetables.  I’m excited to start her on some finger foods too.  We started them around this next month with Emmett so I’ll updated on that in her 10 month post.  Breastfeeding is still going really well and she nurses probably 5-6 times a day although I’m not really paying much attention.  I just feed her when she’s fussy really.  I can’t imagine her giving it up anytime soon but stranger things have happened.

One last thing I want to mention is that when I hold Campbell she pats me on the back.  It’s super sweet and she really only does it to me.  It’s like she’s saying, “thanks so much for picking me up mom!”  Another thing she does is when I put her down in the living room and I go into the kitchen, she follows me and when she wants me to pick her up she will climb up my leg.  She will also sometimes lift her arms to motion that she wants to be held.

Sleeping is still going really well.  We have noticed that if she isn’t tired right when we are getting ready to put her down and hasn’t been nursed to sleep, she prefers we leave her lamp on.  For whatever reason she almost never cries when left to go to sleep for the night if we leave the lamp on.  We sneak in and turn it off before we go to bed.  As I mentioned before, he constipation problems caused her some pain and a lot of that pain would happen in the middle of the night.  One night (Christmas Eve) she woke up 3 times because it was so painful to try and poop.  She’s doing much better now though and is back to her regular 7pm-8am sleeping schedule.  She also, at some point, sprouted her two top teeth!  I’ve been feeling for them for months and they are finally starting to graze the surface of her gums!  So maybe by 10 months she’ll have 4 teeth or so.  It’s going to be really weird to look at her smile with those top teeth though!  She’s still my baby but this is starting to make her look less like a baby.  At least she still has short baby hair!

If there’s anything else worth mentioning then I’ll come back and edit this post (for my own satisfaction) but for now I think that’s about it!  I know every single month I end with the same stuff…she’s amazing and beautiful, and easy going, and wonderful and perfect.  Happy 9 months my squishy/precious/incredible daughter.  I love you more than stars (as your papa says).

Merry Christmas!

Just wanted to wish everyone out there a VERY Merry Christmas since that’s what we celebrate over here and if you don’t celebrate Christmas then Happy Holidays to you all!

And because we get to celebrate with both sides of the family this year I’ve always wanted to try this.  Let’s see if we can make my dream a reality 😉

Campbell Beth 8 Months

Why it has been so hard to sit down and just do this post is beyond my scope of comprehension.  It’s so busy this time of year and I do put myself first a lot of the times, especially when it comes to my workouts but that’s about it.  After my workout then I feel as though it’s time to put everything else first.  My blogging is definitely a “me” thing.  I have no clue how many people read this stuff but I started it as a way to document my life then it morphed drastically into documenting my pregnancy with Emmett and now updates of my kids.  But these posts are the toughest.  I put so much thought into every little detail of each month that by the time I sit to write about it my head’s about to burst and I can’t do it.  I make sure other things get in the way.  But it’s December 17th now for crying out loud and my little baby girl is almost 9 months old now and soon I’ll be writing about that!!  So here we go again…Another post only this one is about her 8th month of life.

Campbell Beth.  Oh my goodness.  She has just jumped over milestones this past month.  It’s been the best month to date no doubt.  As I’ve said many times in Emmett’s updates, the months just get better and better.  You don’t ever realize it and sometimes when I am rocking her I just wish to myself that she won’t get another day older and that she’ll stay that way forever but a) that’s just silly and b) that would be terrible because everyday I get to know her better and better as she grows up just a little bit more.  This girl is a mover.  She started crawling full on just shy of turning 8 months.  She’s been up on her hands and knees for a while but over Thanksgiving she really just took off.  She finally got that if she just picked up those knees and moved those hands at the same time then she’d get somewhere.  It’s been so fun to watch her figure this stuff out.  She’s now able to go anywhere she wants to and she’s FAST so watch out!

This girl also started waving this past month.  She just picks her hand up, stretches out all of her fingers, throws her arm up and waves!  She waves like she smiles.  She waits to catch someones attention then that arm shoots up and she gives a nice big wave at the end of it.  People stop and remark on how adorable it is.  I have to agree.  After she shoots her hand up and waves she gives a toothy little grin to the receiver of the wave.  It’s about the cutest damn thing I’ve ever seen.  Speaking of teeth.  She still only has those 2 bottom teeth.  There’s been no sight of any others popping through.  She drools like a crazy person but that’s been going on for months with nothing happening in there.  I suppose we’ll know when our sleep starts getting interrupted again.

So sleep.  Ok, I’m not complaining and it’s still been going wonderfully but this girl has been getting up at around 2 hours past the time we put her in bed every night.  Without fail we will put her down around 7 or 7:30pm and she’s up again at around 9-10pm SCREAMING her head off for no reason what so ever.  I’ll go in, feed her (because I don’t know what else to do) and then she’ll go right back to sleep for the rest of the night.  It was getting really old really fast and thank goodness it wasn’t happening at 2am but still!  So we decided one night after a particularly tough day with Emmett that we were just going to let her cry it out.  It didn’t really happen on purpose.  We were sitting in the living room talking about Emmett and the tough day and how to move forward with a certain behavior of his when C started up her usual screaming fit.  Chad and I were just too busy to care about the screaming and it got louder and louder until it just stopped.  She cried for about 10 minutes and then it was over.  Chad just said “Did we just let her cry it out?”  And I suppose that’s exactly what we did that night.  The next night she woke up but she only cried for about 3 minutes before putting herself back to sleep.  It became less and less every night until one night she just stopped doing it.  It was a really weird phase.  But it was pretty much all of this past month and now it’s over.  I of course thought it was related to teething but she still has no new teeth!  So I think she was just training us!  Little stinker.

Campbell has also started clapping.  I remember Emmett doing this at this exact same age thinking that he was brilliant but when we went to his 9 month doc. visit it was on the well visit questionnaire about “can your baby do this?”  So I know she’s not brilliant and this is a developmental milestone but it was still so adorable the first time I witnessed it.  It’s so crazy too because she seems to clap on at the most appropriate times.  Someone will say something funny and she will giggle and clap.  If something makes her happy then she’ll clap.  If someone does something that pleases her then she’ll clap.  It’s both hilarious and adorable (how many times can I use that word in this post!?).

Campbell will also still go to anyone.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen her cry when given to a stranger.  Anyone can pick her up but she DEFINITELY knows who I am and if she seems me then game over.  She will always prefer me over others.  I’m just waiting though.  It seems to me that after E turned 9 months is when the stranger danger thing hit really hard with him.  I have a feeling it’s going to be about 1,000 times worse with C.  I do think she has a great bond with her dad though.  As much as she loves me, I think she also will be a little daddy’s girl too.  It’s so much fun to watch Chad play with her.  It’s just a totally different bond that he has with Campbell.  Those two had a rough go at it in the beginning but they’ve come around and I can see them being super close.  I can also see her wrapping him around that fat little finger of hers.

Campbell also turned a corner with eating solid foods.  She will literally eat anything!  I was so nervous last month because she really could have cared less about foods but this month is totally different.  I don’t know what happened.  I suppose just offering it to her enough was it.  We never gave up and she eventually came around and started eating like a horse.  I am only feeding her once a day, at dinner time, because that’s all that I have energy for but she does get finger foods throughout the day like puffs and teether crackers.  Those are especially nice for when I need her to be in one spot so I can get things done or when we’re out at a restaurant and I need her to be happy.  Her palate has tried a lot of different foods because Michele has been giving me baby food that she has been making.  Her favorites are still the less sweet stuff but at least now she’ll eat a banana or something with a bit more sweetness to it.  We are still going strong with breastfeeding and I don’t see an end in sight any time soon.  We got sort of lazy with giving her a bottle after I returned home from DC back at the end of September so really almost the entire month of October we didn’t really use a bottle.  Well, that sort of blew up in our faces when Campbell started refusing the bottle again this month!  It was super stressful and around November 1 we pushed the bottle hard on her and worked all month long on getting her to take one again.  Once morning she just took it again!  So ever since we have been giving her at least one bottle every other day to make sure that doesn’t ever happen again.  I plan to breastfeed her as long as possible.  Without sounding totally psychotic, I’d like to make it to 18 months but we’ll see.

C is also now totally comfortable in the jogging stroller and will still sit in her swing while I run on the treadmill if I don’t get my run in before she gets up.

Her demeanor is that of an angel 🙂  No but seriously she has the BEST personality and when I put her to bed at night I literally cannot wait to see her again in the morning.  She just brings more joy into my life than I ever thought possible.  I love playing with her on the floor, watching her do new things, smiling and talking to her, running errands with her and all around just love having her as my little sidekick.  She’s become my buddy and I feel so lucky that we have special one on one time together while Emmett goes to preschool.  Happy 8 months baby girl!  As the days go I think to myself, “how can I love you anymore than I love you today?” and then somehow I end up loving you more each and every day that passes.

Monday, yuck

Normally I really don’t mind Mondays.  I like getting up early, getting my run done on my treadmill and eating breakfast all before 7:30am and all before my kids wake up.  Today was not that type of Monday.  This morning I woke up at 7:19am, way too late to go on a run even if I wanted to.  We have been sick since Wednesday and haven’t left the house, except to go to the doctor, since Thursday.  And ya know what?  I haven’t even cared one bit.  I have felt like shi* since Friday evening so the whole not leaving the house and staying in my PJs all weekend was just what I needed.  But, when I woke up and still had a sore throat this morning and also felt like I’d been hit by a truck, I wanted to crawl back into bed and cry.  Today I really despise Monday.  I don’t want my husband to go to work today.  I don’t want to be a mom to two sick kids and take care of my sick self today.  I don’t want to stay in the house again for another day.  I don’t want to go running and I want to go running (what!?).  I really just don’t want to do life today because that’s the kind of mood I’m in.  But I’m going to pick myself up and put my big girl panties on and I’m going to take my kids outside today because it’s going to be in the 50s.  I’m going to make us healthy food to nourish our bodies and I’m going to try my best to keep the TV off and the smile on my face.  Who needs a mom who’s sick and in a bad mood anyways.  Not my kids and not on this Monday.

 

Check it out! Another Guest post on Babyfoode!

Good afternoon readers!  Because I’m procrastinating on writing up Campbell’s 8 month post (haven’t even taken pics of her yet) I’m going to share with you my guest post on Babyfoode today.  Actually, it was published yesterday but I’m just now getting around to sharing that I actually wrote up a post over there.  Ok, to be honest, I post over there about every other week or so but just haven’t shared much about it over here on my little space for a while.  So, go give Michele some love and check out my post.  This week’s topic is all about foods that help produce more milk while breastfeeding.  Click the picture below to get to the post.  I hope you are all enjoying your Friday so far!